Seeing the Forest Reflected Through the Trees

As some animals in the have evolved to blend in with their environments, some designers have experimented with creating environments that do the same. They have done so by utilizing techniques and materials to reflect the natural images onto their surfaces, in effect camouflaging their creations, rendering them one with nature.Aranda/Lasch’s Camouflage View

Close-up view of the reflective fins in Aranda/Lasch’s installation

Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch of Aranda/Lasch say their design, Camouflage View “plays with the art of camouflage, the disguising of an object or person. An installation at Quebec’s International Garden Festival’s Jardins de Métis, it conceals and is itself concealed.” The duo have created “an optical device which heightens our perception of the landscape”–a wall of polished stainless steel fins that sit at the end of a long zig-zagging path overlooking the St-Lawrence river, reflecting the verdant landscape, the river, and the visitor.

For another installation at the International Garden Festival, Montreal Architect Hal Ingberg wrapped a forest in his series, Coloured Reflections: Wrapping and Framing Savage Nature. It’s a semitransparent triangle that provides an intimate, courtyard-like enclosure that both frames and intensifies the experience of being in the forest. Consisting of large panels of glass in the middle of the woods, they are at once green, semi opaque, and reflective. The structure invites visitors to circle it, observing the various ways they interact with it in the changing light.